not one before another
by TrisakAminawn
Summary: "They're turning you into a soldier, aren't they?" she asked, running her fingers through his hair. He closed his eyes whenever she did this, trying to pretend he didn't know it was happening, as though he was more likely to get away with it that way. (The strands reached past his shoulders by then, and slipped between Ifalna's fingers more smoothly than Aerith's ever had.)
1. Little Sister

**not one above another I**

 _ **A/N:** Or: Five times Sephiroth was somebody's brother, and one time he wasn't anymore. 5+1 fic selected as format because I always kinda wanted to do one, we'll see how it works! I get to do six different Sephiroths this way. ^^  
_

* * *

Sephiroth had almost corrected the first person who called Aerith his sister, a woman they'd met before they were even out of Midgar's slums complimenting him on taking such good care of her while their mother shopped. Almost—and then stopped, because if she'd categorized them already she was less likely to remember them as suspicious. It was no good arguing. Awkwardly, he accepted the compliment. Aerith didn't object.

(This was honestly a surprise. Since she'd learned to talk she never ever shut up.)

He'd been eight when Ifalna came to the labs, tiny Aerith wrapped tight in her arms. She let Hojo do whatever he wanted with her, as long as Aerith was untouched, and Sephiroth—he'd had no intention of speaking to them. But one evening as he passed Ifalna's cell on the way to his own, he heard her murmur _oh, Gast._ He'd stopped. Professor Gast had been kinder and cleverer than Hojo, and he had vanished more than two years ago, and Sephiroth _missed_ him like a severed limb. He found himself standing facing the door. "Do you know where he is?"

"…what?"

"Professor Gast. He disappeared. He…was a great scientist," Sephiroth said, because that was safe to say and made Hojo angry.

"I suppose he was," Ifalna said after a moment. He heard her get up off the cot and come closer to the door as she spoke. "By the standards of this place."

"But where is he?"

"Hojo killed him, I'm afraid." Sephiroth's teeth and fists and heart clenched, the thoughts _no_ and _I knew it_ clashing in his mind. "He was Aerith's father, you know," she said. "He…loved us both very much. I wish…."

So that was where the Professor had gone. Disappeared to this woman and child who he _loved._ And all it got them in the end was a cell down the hall from Sephiroth's. He felt a vicious satisfaction in his chest at that, as he turned on his heel and kept going to bed. "I wish he'd taken you with him when he left Shinra," Ifalna said.

It was so close to something Sephiroth had thought himself over and over that he stood frozen in the hall several more seconds before continuing the rest of the way to his room. The door locked once he was inside, and he went to bed.

He could hear Ifalna two doors down singing a quiet lullaby, and for the first time, he allowed himself to listen. It wasn't the kind of thing that showed up on the cameras, after all. It was safe.

* * *

Hojo mocked him for talking to Ifalna anyway, gloated about Professor Gast. Then it turned out Ifalna wanted to see him. Was willing to bargain for the privilege and it made him so _angry,_ that she would offer Hojo more leverage over what he already had, that she would risk letting Hojo use both of them against each other. "Gast talked about you," she said when they stood face to face in the gymnasium. Aerith was toddling back and forth changing the settings on the weight machines.

 _What did he say,_ Sephiroth couldn't ask.

"Mostly he talked about the science behind you," she admitted. "But he said you were…a good boy. Very clever."

Sephiroth shrugged. He didn't have much basis for comparison. Ifalna smiled slightly. She was the only person he had ever met with so _much_ hair. It came down nearly to her ankles and the bulk of it made her seem larger, though she wasn't really a very tall woman. "Very levelheaded, too. I thought that was a strange compliment, but now I see. Aerith, sweetheart, don't touch that!" She broke off their conversation to steer her daughter away from the free weights and got her attempting handstands on the mats, then looked back at Sephiroth. "Maybe you could demonstrate?"

Sephiroth was used to giving demonstrations. Ifalna had no authority to command one, but then again demonstrations of _handstand technique_ weren't exactly…demanding. Even if the Ancient were any good at them, her skirts would get in the way. "Here," he told the little girl briskly, and dropped forward.

" _Wow,_ " she said a second later.

A small laugh from Ifalna and Sephiroth righted himself, fuming, _how dare she gloat_ that he'd done what she wanted, unlike Hojo she had no way of ensuring he repeated the performance—but she wasn't gloating after all, he decided. Her smile was…gentle. "Maybe again a bit slower?" she suggested. "I don't think my little mu here quite got that."

By the time he was ten, he had gotten used to visits with Ifalna. Hojo withheld them sometimes as punishment, but Sephiroth had carefully never admitted that he looked forward to them, or minded when they were canceled, so usually the schedule depended on Ifalna' behavior, not his.

"They're turning you into a soldier, aren't they?" she asked, running her fingers through his hair. He closed his eyes whenever she did this, trying to pretend he didn't know it was happening, as though he was more likely to get away with it that way. The strands had reached past his shoulders by then, and slipped between Ifalna's fingers more smoothly than Aerith's ever had.

Sephiroth hadn't known what to reply. They already _had_ made him a SOLDIER. He trained with the new adult ones sometimes already. He shrugged.

"They'll send you off to war," she predicted. "Do you want that?"

Sephiroth shrugged. "At least I won't be here anymore."

"…there is that."

* * *

Ifalna's escape plan had been sneaky, and tricky, and very, very precisely timed. Maybe it would have worked perfectly for just her and Aerith, but before they were out of the Tower they found themselves being shot at. Sephiroth would have expected to feel something about killing Shinra's guards, but he didn't. No guilt, and no triumph either. It was sort of pointless as well as easy, and he wished they would just…go away. Since they wouldn't, and he couldn't let Ifalna die now, they went down in sprays of blood.

Hojo really shouldn't have allowed him access to weapons without a lot more supervision than just one assistant. Even a knife small enough to hide in his shirt was useful.

They had parted ways with Ifalna in the grasslands. She was going to lead Shinra away east and then seem to cross the ocean to Wutai, hopefully leaving a false trail that the Turks would be trying to chase against Wutai's national sentiments for a good long time. Sephiroth's assignment was to head south and keep Aerith safe.

They were to meet up again in Gongaga. After three months if they hadn't reconnected, the rendezvous point changed to Mideel. He could look after Aerith that long. She might be unpredictable, but he was faster. (The possibility that Ifalna would not appear before them in Gongaga or Mideel or ever again he left unconsidered, even though he knew that if she were certain she could avoid being caught she would not have let Aerith out of her sight.)

The Mythril swamps had been disgusting and full of snakes. Aerith loved them. The brown dye Ifalna had bought him in Kalm meant that the miners barely looked twice at him on the way through the tunnels, and one actually joked that he looked just like his sister, but not as adorable, not to worry. Green eyes and the sharp way their bangs hung, he supposed.

"Brother!" Aerith crowed now on the south side of the mountains, holding up a writhing snake as long as her arm but only as thick as her finger. This enthusiasm for reptiles had better die down soon. Sephiroth checked their supply of Antidotes again. Seven. If it got below five he was going to stop letting her touch things. "It looks like you!"

"It does not." The snake had vertical pupils and its eyes were a sort of greenish-yellow on black, and the pattern of scales along its back was a sort of diamond-studding of white on brown. "Pupils do not a resemblance make," he informed her, because there was no one to hear and take notice of his eyes. "Now put the thing down. You don't like being kidnapped and examined and neither does anybody else."

* * *

 _ **A/N:** jenova was impersonating a cetra when she died which may account for the fact that sephiroth came out with hair volume outdone only by ifalna's and bangs like aerith's? way to muddy the racial waters there you abomination from space. Chatterbox little Aerith and Sephiroth having never gotten over Gast Faremis' disappearance are both game canon though! Twenty years later and he was still upset about it. I always wonder if he knew who Aerith's father was._

 _I like this universe and may write more of it at some point, especially if there's interest. ;]  
_


	2. Twin

**not one above another II**

 _ **A/N:** This is the one caused by a sarcastic joke about the Junon Cannon Slap Fight and why dragon-punching Tifa could go down so hard. Timeline is my own calculation. Rufus' nickname is canon though, so canon. (So is the name 'Sister Ray' being printed on the side of the Junon Cannon.)  
_

* * *

The other half of Project S went by the name of Scarlet. She was vicious as soon as she could walk, which was much younger than any normal child managed it and only a month behind her brother, and when she was three she took apart one of the scanners she'd been left asleep under and built an electric prod that she used to make Sephiroth move, mostly out of places she wouldn't have wanted to be if she hadn't been looking for an excuse to prod him.

When she was seven, she escaped Hojo's lab and turned up again two labs down, happily deconstructing a robot.

"She takes after me," Hojo informed the more obedient half of the Project rather smugly, as Scarlet was brought back to the lab under heavy sedation. "You're more like your mother." Scarlet had the strength the Project had been intended to create, and she was fast enough, but Gast had enthused about the mental capacities of the Ancients back when he drew up the Project, and it was that aspect of their potential she seemed destined to explore for Shinra.

President Shinra was open to accommodating her application to join Weapons Development, once he'd asked why not Science—'it would be a _conflict of interest_ ' she lied angelically—and she started work at the age of twelve, just before the Wutai War was declared. By the time the twins were fifteen, she headed her own research team and he was a Commander. "I have this plan, see?" she asked, brandishing a sheaf of papers at him when he came back to Midgar for leave. "The _biggest mako cannon ever._ Look at the pistons! They're beautiful, they need to be real, kyaha!"

"What good is the biggest mako canon ever?"

"The point isn't what it's good for, the point is showing that it would work!"

Sephiroth rubbed his eyes. It was hard to get much sleep on the front, especially when he had reports to write at night. His sister was somehow more exhausting than any of it. "Maybe ships," he said. "See if you can convince the President it would be perfect to defend Junon in case the Wutai put together a navy."

Honestly the President was probably aware that a naval attack on the opposite side of the Planet from the enemy was improbable, but he wasn't averse to building giant machines to prove they worked, not if they looked cool, especially not if they made the company stronger. By the time the Sister Ray was mostly constructed, the twins were twenty and Sephiroth had been made a General. Scarlet took over her Department with less pomp and far more real accession to power. "Don't worry," she told him with a little cackle. "I'll have a Brother Beam built on the east coast just for you!"

"Please spare the budget," her brother answered. "My men need human-scale guns."

"I am _making_ your boring human-sized guns. Go away, there's something wrong with the reactor in Corel and I am _not_ letting Hojo win this one."

When they were twenty-five the war had ended and he was a hero, somehow, to all the world but Wutai, and his heart was broken. He went to his sister not because she had ever been kind but because she was clever. "Jenova Project," he said, stepping out of the shadows of her lab.

She jumped, a very little—he'd learned to hide from war-trained SOLDIERs and ninjas, and for all she had almost his gifts that went only so far without practice—and laughed. "Kyahaha!"

"You know what it is. You've probably hacked all the files."

"Oh, you know me, I'm really more a hard steel and bright energy girl than a computer chick…yes, of course I have." She reactivated the tiny circular saw in her hand and brought it down on the robot joint.

Sephiroth didn't raise his voice to be heard over the saw blade, but his tone sharpened. "What is it?"

Scarlet smirked. "It's us, of course. And your stupid, deteriorating, AWOL friends. Didn't I tell you they'd only leave? Everybody does."

He wanted to strike her. But if he started he might never stop, so he saved it for his enemies—whoever those were now—and said only, "You left first."

" _Gast_ left first," she corrected smartly, tapping the sharp severed halves of the joint together. "I see what went wrong here," she announced, and dove into the mechanism with tweezers.

"Scarlet."

"Sephiroth." She looked up, shook her head. "Stop trying to pretend," she told him. "I built my career here for myself. I make weapons, I won't be one."

 _But you are,_ Sephiroth thought, not sure which of them he was thinking at. _That's all you've ever known how to be._ "What are you going to do?" he asked wryly. "Marry Rufus, kill him, and take over the company?"

His sister beamed at him, eyes bright as the Junon Cannon, and tapped the tweezers against her lips. "That's a great idea! But I think Little Prez is too savvy to let me get away with it. Too bad, huh?"

Sephiroth smiled a little because Rufus Shinra hated people using his childhood nickname now that he was twenty-one, and it would always be funny, and the familiarity of Scarlet's breezy scheming filled in the pit in his chest just a little.

They were twenty-six when he died. She put a hand to her heart for a moment, puzzled, and went back to squabbling with Heidegger about the budget. The next time she saw Hojo he smiled like he had won a victory she could never compete against or overset.

It took her five days to figure out what.


	3. Youngest

**not one above another III  
**

 _ **A/N:** So I hold Genesis responsible for the length of this monster. Though really it's just a much more complicated premise. To the tune of _13,000 goddamn words _. If I'd realized how long this was going to be I probably would've made this an AU series, not a single fic._

 _SOLDIER recruits mostly boys in their mid-teens, and the Wutai War started when Sephiroth was probably between twelve and sixteen, and lasted at least a decade. Shinra attacked in the south from Wutai's only shallow-water port and worked their way north, devastating the landscape. Wutai is heavily forested even though it doesn't look that way in FFVII. One of the terms of surrender was that Wutai disarm by giving up materia. These are things we can be fairly certain of. The rest of the information about the war here is my own confabulation based on the timeline, military culture, and strategic picture suggested by the Wutai map.  
_

 _This chapter also contains several references to game dialogue and one to the Beatles' Yellow Submarine film. ^^_

* * *

When Angeal and Genesis had still been new recruits, recently enough arrived in Midgar to still be shocked and appalled by the price of fresh fruit, but after their meteoric rise from SOLDIER Third to SOLDIER Second in a week had drawn attention to them, Angeal had swung his family weapon at Sephiroth with all his newly enhanced strength and shattered the sword that blocked it.

The blade itself had been nothing special, apart from being the single-edged Wutaian style Sephiroth was beginning to feel he liked, and if it hadn't been for some of the shrapnel burying itself in his chest cavity while he was too surprised to dodge, all he would have taken away from the experience would have been a new respect for the unwieldy heirloom. And possibly its wielder.

(He suspected that this incident was the reason Angeal stopped using the Hewley sword casually, began training and fighting with standard-issue broadswords, which was foolish because it wasn't _that_ powerful a weapon, and in fact by the time Angeal was facing opponents he would not have felt dishonorable unleashing his father's sword against he had realized _they_ might harm _it_ , and took to simply carting it around everywhere unused as a very strange sort of weight training. 'Freighted with metaphor,' Genesis called him once.)

But the steel shards of Sephiroth's training sword did just that, slicing between and under his ribs, and even with his robust anatomy it would have been unwise to simply Cure the damage with the metal still inside, which meant surgery. It was hardly the first time he'd been opened up but he never liked it; the only surprise was that the anaesthetic worked better than usual and Hojo sewed him up fairly efficiently, not taking time to explore.

A much larger surprise was waking up in the infirmary with two teenagers in purple jumpsuits waiting beside the bed.

"I'm really very sorry," the dark-haired Second said as soon as they'd established he was fully conscious and not in need of anything.

Sephiroth flicked his fingers lethargically. "Sparring accident. Hardly going to retaliate."

Hewley looked appalled. "I wasn't trying to _accuse_ you. Or appease you. I realize you outrank us but you're also at least a year younger, I…feel terrible about being so careless with a comrade's safety. So I wanted to apologize."

The auburn-haired Second—Rhapsodic?—pointed at the back of his friend's head and mouthed _honor freak._

Well, if he meant it, accepting was probably the only way to shut him up. "It's fine," Sephiroth said. "Your conduct was not inappropriate."

His voice rasped a little, and Hewley said, "Are you sure you don't want some water?"

"Very." The IV drip would replenish his fluids adequately, he couldn't swallow safely lying on his back, and he knew from experience that trying to sit up just yet, even with assistance from the hospital bed, would be far more unpleasant than a mere scratchy throat.

"They wouldn't let me give you a transfusion," Hewley said unhappily, as if being deprived of the opportunity to bleed for Sephiroth's benefit was a personal blow.

"They never do," Sephiroth shrugged. Hojo was slightly obsessed with monitoring his blood chemistry, which he assumed was at least part of the reason, but with healing magic available and his constitution it had never been a serious problem. Hewley looked offended on his behalf anyway.

"We'll let you rest," said Rhapsody smoothly, hooking an arm around Hewley's chest. "Come on," he muttered very audibly. "You're just being weird now."

"See you tomorrow," Hewley said as his friend pulled him away, leaving Sephiroth in his recovery bed very much baffled.

But see him the next day they did, ducking in on their way to class in the morning and greeting him that afternoon after he'd been released for light duty. He didn't know what to make of it. It turned out that the slim redhead was called _Rhapsodos,_ though Hewley always called him Genesis. They had been friends since early childhood and Sephiroth found himself thinking of them by their first names rather quickly, simply because those were the only ones he heard.

"You've already taken these classes," Genesis declared on the third day of this pattern, slapping a textbook dramatically on the table in the mess hall before setting down his lunch rather more carefully. Angeal was already settled in across the table from Shinra's youngest First. "Right?"

"I'm not tutoring you," Sephiroth told him. People had asked that, occasionally, valuing a chance of improving their rankings enough to dare to approach him, but he didn't get enough free time to fritter it away on people who wanted to sponge off of him instead of working for themselves.

Genesis sneered. "Of course you aren't _tutoring_ me, you're roughly twelve."

Angeal looked up from his carefully dismembered noodle casserole. "He's fourteen." He would be fifteen soon. Angeal had just turned sixteen. It wasn't much more than a year's difference, and Sephiroth was just as tall as Genesis.

Maybe _slightly_ shorter—the Second wore his hair short and tousled, which made him look slightly taller than he was, and Sephiroth didn't care enough to requisition his personnel file for an exact figure, which might not even be accurate if it had been a while since his last physical.

Negligent shrug from Rhapsodos. "Same thing. Anyway I wanted to ask, does Captain Rourke who does advanced tactics prefer his short-essay answers efficient or wordy?"

Sephiroth had done most of his classwork via equivalency exam, but Rourke he had worked with. "…he prefers that you answer the question."

"Yes, but _how?_ Some instructors penalize making them read too much, whereas others consider using too few words a sign of insufficient effort."

Sephiroth went back to his sandwich. "Try both and see."

Genesis looked thoughtfully at him for a moment, bit into his apple, shuddered faintly and set it back down. "Ugh. Mealy. Look, did you get good marks from Rourke?"

"…yes."

"Wonderful, laconic efficiency it is." He stuck his fork into the casserole and left it there, standing up, while he sipped his canned coffee. "It's ridiculous they're willing to promote us so fast and let us make up the coursework as we go."

Angeal shrugged. "There's a war on."

"Hark at the great patriot." Genesis finally tried a bite of casserole. "Also terrible," he pronounced. Took another bite.

"Wait until you get to the front," said Sephiroth. Not with much venom, because at least the adolescent Captain was still _eating_ it. "There's nothing that can't be safely stored for three months, and a lot of it has been stored far longer."

" _Thank you_ for the warning. My discretionary gear at this point is going to consist entirely of clean socks and food."

"What was it going to be before?" asked Angeal. "Books?"

"You know me so well."

Moron. At least he was capable of gathering information and then altering his plans to fit it, thought Sephiroth. That was by no means something he'd found himself able to take for granted from the officer corps stationed in Wutai, even from all of his fellow colonels, all of whom were at least twice his age. Or had been when he originally deployed, anyway; he thought there was one who was twenty-seven now. And Heidegger had to be actively maneuvered around to get anything done.

Sephiroth didn't offer any more advice for the rest of the meal, and Genesis didn't ask for it. The conversation revolved largely around the other students in their classes (not all hopeless, but most of the ones who were any good in class were less than impressive with a sword, and Genesis insisted with sweeping arm gestures that there was no fundamental reason one could not excel at _both_ ) and the foods they missed most from home. The friends talked mostly to one another, but often to him.

He had no comment of his own about food. Gast used to slip him treats, sometimes, but he didn't remember any of the foods especially clearly, just the experience of being given them, and Hojo's stifled fury at the disruption of his nutritional balance. These days he was trusted to maintain a balanced diet on his own, which was a nice change even if it resulted in cafeteria sandwiches. Sitting quietly meant learning that being from Banora meant taking apples very, very seriously, and that Angeal's mother baked.

Sephiroth finished his lunch and decided this was the best time to ask, or at least that any later would not be an improvement. "Why are you talking to me."

In response Genesis frowned, huffed, and stood up, lifting his half-full lunch tray. "Well _excuse me._ " And this was why Sephiroth _hated talking to people._ Couldn't anyone answer a question, when he finally abandoned his pride enough to ask it? No, they just _reacted_ instead, leaving him no wiser than before.

"Is it a problem?" asked Angeal from across the table, and he at least didn't seem angry. Though not best pleased, either.

Sephiroth stacked his empty cup on his empty plate and dropped the plastic cutlery beside it, crisply. In a matching neutral tone he said, "It has no _precedent._ "

"…we've been sitting with you at lunch for three days," pointed out Angeal.

"Precisely. What do you want?" No one had ever taken this long to make their case. Hewley's guilt over his injury should have run its course once he was off light duty, at the latest. They were staring at him. Now they both seemed angry, and he narrowed his eyes. Whatever they had been building up to was clearly both demanding and of value to them. "Out with it."

Genesis set his tray down again hard enough that the empty coffee can tipped sideways and fell over. "That," he declared without sitting down, "may actually be the saddest thing I have ever heard. Dreams of the morrow hath the shattered soul. Are you insulted, Angeal? I am definitely insulted."

"I'm trying not to be," Angeal said in a strangely neutral voice. "Sephiroth," he said, leaning forward. "I don't want anything from you."

Genesis snorted. "My rocks-for-brains partner here wants to be your _friend_ , SOLDIER First Sephiroth. If you only accept friends of comparable rank tell us now and maybe he'll come back once he's been promoted—don't make that face, you know it's inevitable," he told Angeal.

"I don't think rank is the problem," Angeal replied.

The fewer things he could in theory do for them, the less likely it was that they wanted him to do them, but—no. Rank was not the problem. "And what do _you_ want?" Sephiroth asked Genesis, because it had not escaped his notice that he had spoken only on his friend's behalf.

Rhapsodos shrugged. "The benefit of your experience with the instructors would be nice," he said. "And once you're up to it I'd like a spar."

Sephiroth looked blankly at the rookie Second. All Hewley had needed to do to get the spar that had gone so drastically wrong was ask. "And?"

"No, I think that's everything." Genesis nodded decisively, righted the coffee can, and sat back down to readdress himself to the remains of his lunch. " _Some_ of us have talent and pride, my young friend," he informed Sephiroth. "I will distinguish myself ably without playing parasite, and Angeal's honor will hardly let him do less."

When Sephiroth glanced at Angeal, he was smiling, a wry, warm thing. "Don't worry, he confuses everyone at first. He's a good friend, though."

Sephiroth suspected he might get the opportunity to discover the truth of that assurance for himself. It…wasn't an unpleasant idea.

Genesis snapped his fingers. "Oh! Hair-care. I want to talk about that at some point. What products do you use?"

Angeal slid his tray to one side so he could bury his head in his hands. "I take it back. I don't know you."

* * *

Sephiroth redeployed a week later, once Hojo was satisfied there were no complications from the surgery. The General turned out to have caught poisoned shuriken in the chest, calf, and shoulder, and be running the war entirely from inside his tent until the side effects cleared up; he took one look at Sephiroth, sighed in relief, and handed him a battalion to hit the Shou-Gurren valley with, because as long as the Wutai had a strong presence there none of Shinra's improvised bridges across was ever going to hold long enough for major troop movements.

The Wutai had destroyed their own bridge when they retreated across it, and the war effort had been stalled in place ever since. Sephiroth thought it was reasonably likely they would stay that way until Shinra manufactured either enough helicopters or airships to land a significant troop presence in the north or enough SOLDIERS near Sephiroth's level for a small unit of them to strike behind enemy lines and take Wutaian towns whole. Still, he had his orders. They weren't precisely bad ones. He would rather be told to do something impossible with no further detail than told to do something reasonable in a way which left him no space for decision-making on the ground.

The Shou-Gurren valley was impenetrable except by climbing up or down steep cliffs. Down was preferable, being more simply accomplished from a more accessible location, but completely negated the element of surprise since anyone descending into the valley was visible from its floor. He requisitioned a dozen boats and two thousand feet of cable; got eight boats, three hundred feet of cable, and one thousand feet of rope. Better than expected.

His plan was, he was not overestimating when he said, the best one possible considering the circumstances and resources available. It still was not an enormous surprise to him when it went utterly to hell.

He was with the group rappelling downward; he had gone so far as to tie his hair back and wrap himself in a black cloak to avoid being a beacon. The ninjas found them anyway, of course, and he was still a hundred feet up when the rope went slack in his hands.

He kicked off from the cliff hard; rolled in the air, caught the upper boughs of the nearest tree and flung himself back toward the cliff face. Back toward the tree again, this time kicking himself away from the hard trunk, and he caught a screaming falling soldier under each arm and touched down gently. Around him the rest of his troops were falling, and he set the first two down and leapt up, caught another pair of troopers and brought them to the ground safely, closing his ears to the screams of agony and crack of splintering bones and the other still more horrible sounds of people dying, or not quite dying, at the end of a fall.

The men who'd been issued cable reached the ground, then, the ones who'd avoided catching a shuriken or a spell in the back, along with a lucky minority of those whose ropes had not been severed, and Sephiroth led the remnant of his force—some ninety men of two hundred—into the forest at a breakneck pace. The slower Wutaian forces were trampled over and lost most of their advantage, but there would be more. There were always more, and they had the advantage in woodland.

Only the most talented materia users in SOLDIER could compete magically with the average Wutaian ninja, a fact that was never acknowledged in the propaganda materials at home in Midgar but became brutally obvious at the front. Sephiroth didn't know a single officer who didn't aspire to impounding every materia orb in Wutai.

Since most attack spells covered a fairly broad area, especially the strong ones, the best strategy against powerful casters was to close quarters, which was why SOLDIER was so valuable in this conflict. Most monsters were as well or better fought from a distance with guns, but between their materia and their shuriken users, letting the Wutai keep you out of melee range spelled doom. Basic sword training was part of the Army curriculum, and a significant percentage of the standard troops were issued blades at this point, though the President disliked the idea. It did not gel with the principles that had built Shinra's military—or Shinra itself, for that matter.

Sephiroth darted up and down the ragged line of his small command's vanguard, more useful covering their charge than racing out ahead or holding back his pace to lead the approximation of a formation. One of his men, running on a probably-broken ankle, choked as two halves of a ninja fell from a tree before she had a chance to attack him. Sephiroth caught the man by the shoulder before he could fall, gave him a careful push forward—too much and he'd just knock him to the ground. "Keep up. Or else you'll die." He would probably die anyway. But he had no chance of surviving if left behind.

The pressed on. The Wutaian camp that aerial surveillance had located drew into sight—better-camouflaged than the Shinra variety, and arranged around a principle of concentric rings rather than rows, but not terribly different otherwise.

Sephiroth had no hope they had successfully taken the Wutai unawares, though that had been the best-case scenario.

He put on a burst of speed and dashed across the near perimeter of the camp before his men could reach it, destroying the defensive traps the enemy had set, and then with his free hand flung up a flare.

It hung in the air over the camp, glaring red, and then his formation crossed the perimeter, and the men who'd climbed up the cliff-face from the sea charged, and the Wutaian encampment was caught between them, and briefly it seemed this might be a victory in spite of the casualty rate.

Then in the center of all the rings the largest two tents ripped apart, as though their inhabitants' sheer rage had tattered the fabric. The taller one dove immediately into the fray, while the smaller held position. Sephiroth altered course to target that smaller enemy, instinct and experience uniting in agreement that they were the foremost threat, but the Wutaian line gelled against him, and no matter how fast he killed there was still a delay—

And then the delay had become too much. A massive Slow rippled over the field, catching everyone but the caster, a dozen of what must be the highest-level ninjas, and Sephiroth. The ninjas leapt forward, cutting away Shinra troops as their own withdrew toward the caster of the Slow, until there were two fronts again, and Sephiroth was skilled and quick but he could only target one enemy at a time, when they were spread so widely—he saw his own troops take down one of the attacking ninjas through force of numbers, but the others were slaughtering without challenge until he could reach them, and—

The caster who'd maintained position now unleashed a somewhat smaller Haste, that petered out near the place where the Wutaian line fell—a few of their allies near the fringes might have been left out, and a few Shinra forces sped, but still the strategy had gone off without a hitch before Sephiroth's eyes. The average Wutaian fighter was now slightly faster than their personal base speed, some of their best were at more than twice that, and all but one of their enemies were partially debilitated. Sephiroth was the only Shinra unit still fighting to capacity.

The juggernaut that had burst forth along with the Time-using sorcerer intercepted him in a clash of steel before he could reach his next target.

The other swordsman leapt back instead of maintaining a blade-lock, but as soon as Sephiroth tried to advance, he cut him off again, and a burst of spell-light illuminated the face under the top-knot. With a faint shock, Sephiroth recognized it from a dossier he'd skimmed a year ago—it was the young Lord Kisaragi, who would be taking over rulership of all Wutai when his mother passed or abdicated. _He_ was holding Shou-Gurren?

'Young' was what the man was always called, but he was obviously thirty if he was a day, tall and solidly built. With the benefit of his partner's Haste he was fast enough to keep pace with Sephiroth, and while he didn't have the strength to halt the full weight of Sephiroth's blows, he didn't need to—he kept turning them aside. Just far enough to protect him. A space had opened around their duel wide enough that he didn't have to worry about Sephiroth striking one of his subordinates once deflected. He wasn't quite fast enough or good enough, and not nearly strong enough, to break through Sephiroth's own guard, but he _was_ controlling the distance of their fight. He was in control.

The aggravating thing was that Kisaragi Godo was plainly not a swordsman. He had been trained with a sword, and trained well—Wutai was justly proud of its warrior tradition—but Sephiroth suspected the man preferred heavy shuriken, and would have used those if the tactical situation had permitted. And even beyond that—every time their blades met, he was aware of the pressure of—something. Some strength not brought to bear.

Kisaragi was _holding back_. And still holding Sephiroth at bay. He had not been this simply met since he was _nine years old._

The space around them meant it was safe to call a second-level Fire spell. The flames engulfed Sephiroth too, but he was absolutely certain he could survive far worse damage than the older man, and he made use of the distraction as Godo's sleeves caught fire to bring his sword slicing down at an angle that would be harder to deflect, and when it was met bore down with all his strength and— _yes!_ —broke through.

The point of his blade carved into chest muscle and sent Kisaragi flying backward, bleeding. He doubted it was a fatal wound, hadn't felt ribs catch and part early enough, but as he moved to follow up the blow the air around him rippled and he found himself caught in a powerful, pinpoint Slow.

It was lucky it wasn't Stop, but of course that was harder to make stick. Overpowering a Slow had a much higher chance of successfully hobbling him, even if it didn't take him out of the fight entirely.

Movement to his left and he spun, his reflexes as impaired as everything else, and only just deflected a sword-stroke aimed at his heart. His broadsword snapped in half.

Momentum carried the enemy forward into him, cutting a deep gouge into his shoulder, and it was almost purely instinct without calculation that sent Sephiroth's hand sliding into place to catch his enemy around the throat. He twisted.

Even Slowed, he was fast enough to catch the woman's sword as she fell, with the hand not still feeling the reverberation of a snapping neck. The human spine was very delicate. He'd known it would work. He had lost count of how many people he had killed in the course of two years of war. The feeling still clung.

There was no time for replacing materia now, so he sheathed the useless hilt to clear later and resolved to make do with whatever the ninja had been using. Fire flickered over his fingers when he called—excellent. He carved through the next attacker, but it was harder than it should have been. His men were selling their lives dearly but they were dying around him, and with his speed lost he could no longer efficiently target the strongest enemies.

 _Fall back,_ he would have shouted, except that there was nowhere to fall back _to,_ besides over the cliff; they would take the valley or they would all die—Sephiroth knew he could get out alone, but he couldn't take anyone with him, so it would have to wait until most or all of his men had been butchered.

With no better aim, he kept the remnant of his battalion pushing toward the cliffs. If they dove far enough from the rockface, some of his troopers might survive jumping into the sea. (Especially since the eight wooden boats Shinra had spared this operation should still be waiting, with skeleton crew to fish divers out.)

They were cut off shortly before they got that far, the highest-level Hasted opponents sweeping around to separate them from the cliff's edge in a crescent shape backed by weaker support units, bristling with shuriken, and all presided over by the tiny sorceress that had made such a shambles of an already undermined plan. He felt the remains of his unit's morale falter.

He was still the fastest of them, and as the casting specialist spread her arms and the air hummed and red rings began to spread, he left his men behind to throw himself at her directly, because whatever she was summoning was powerful enough to turn the wind thick, and they would have no chance at all if she succeeded. Even his own chances of escape would dwindle.

A shuriken as tall as he was blocked his path, and he didn't dare try to cut through it in case the unfamiliar weapon in his hand broke as well, and left him unarmed. Kicked it aside, instead, and didn't pause to deflect the swarm of tiny blades behind it, let them hit. He called magic, in the time this gave him, but the woman had a heavy shield over her and the fire landed as no more than a shower of sparks, enough to do a little damage but not enough to disrupt concentration. The red rings were coming faster.

Sephiroth recognized grimly that he wasn't going to get there in time.

A bolt of purple plunged from above and smashed the sorceress onto her back, a sliver of magenta light impaling her chest. Genesis Rhapsodos straightened up, his sword sliding out from between her ribs. "The Goddess descends from the sky," he declaimed. Sephiroth finished lunging across the distance, grabbed him by his sword-harness, and yanked him back as the dying woman's death-curse thundered out of the air. It wasn't the Summon she'd been preparing—she didn't have enough time left for that—just a pillar of lightning, absurdly overcharged with all the magic she had had left. They were caught in its edges, and when it cleared her body had vanished.

Genesis was on his feet first, despite being worse-hit—the benefits of not being held by Time magic—but Sephiroth was right behind him, and rose to discover that the rest of Wutai's top assets had likewise been struck by falling SOLDIERs, and more than half of them were down and no longer moving. Angeal Hewley was crossing blades with a tall ninja all in black, the family sword strapped to his back serving as a sort of heavy armor against attacks from behind.

It wasn't enough, at this point, to give them a chance to rally. They were still badly outnumbered, and the Wutai host had Haste still on their side. But it should be enough to give them a chance to retreat, and it meant their casualties had perhaps not died entirely for nothing.

"To me!" Sephiroth called, and sent a crescent of unformed destructive energy leaping from the end of his salvaged blade and scything through the enemies around him, as he set to carving a path through to the only way out. He really did prefer the katana shape.

Rhapsodos and Hewley had, it emerged, been sent in at the head of an eight-man squad, the rest being Thirds, all of them older than the pair of new-minted Second Class Captains, but none higher-ranking. With their help, mostly under Angeal's organization, seventy-three of the three hundred and fifty troops Sephiroth had led into this death-trap evacuated safely onto the waiting boats. (Four hit the water and didn't come up, and there was no time to search for them.)

Angeal passed Sephiroth a Barrier materia as the barges pulled away, and between him and Genesis they covered the retreat of the little flotilla. One boat was sunk, but slowly enough that all the men aboard were able to leap across to adjacent decks before the inescapable suction of the hull sliding under the water could begin. None of the boats was crowded even afterward.

The voyage south was very silent. Sephiroth barely noticed when the Slow wore off him. He cleaned the blood off his new sword and watched the shoreline. They left the wounded at the base camp on Shinra's southern beachhead, and from there Rhapsodos, Hewley, Sephiroth, four of the Thirds, and eight miraculously hale regulars made their way upslope to Central Command. On arrival, Sephiroth and the two SOLDIER Seconds reported to the General's tent for an accounting.

* * *

"I'm promoting all of you," the General said. He was on his feet again, but stiffly. "Your plan was solid, even though standing orders undermined it, and _your_ rescue mission successful. Colonel, colonel. Commander."

Genesis straightened up a little further, seeming entirely pleased, but Angeal seemed to share Sephiroth's feelings on the matter. "It's our _first deployment,_ " he said blankly. Belatedly, "Sir."

"I lost," Sephiroth pointed out, "eighty percent of my command." And he'd known he was going to, had planned the only course that gave him any chance of victory but known it was unlikely and the casualty rate unavoidably appalling. It was one thing to accept that that was the situation he had been handed and make the best of it, another to be _rewarded_ for it _._

"And if you'd had the rank to force the supplies you needed, you might _not_ have," the General snapped. "Come to me next time, if you can; I would at least have been able to assign you more SOLDIERs from the start. I'm taking full responsibility for the Shou-Gurren snafu, because you shouldn't and Heidegger never will." His mako-bright eyes ran over the three of them, Angeal a few inches taller than the other two, none of them fully grown. His eyes were tired. "Take good care of this army, boys, and of SOLDIER. I'm counting on you."

They left his tent bewildered and weighed down with responsibility. "Wind sails over the water's surface," Genesis announced. "I'm going to wait until the paperwork comes through to think about it. Mess?"

Sephiroth had no appetite, but he knew he had to eat anyway, so he nodded assent. Angeal murmured something similar.

He had been a colonel since he first deployed eighteen months ago. The space in which an adolescent colonel of his talents operated made sense to him. The units assigned him were smaller than his rank suggested, and he'd led so many charges the memories of them blurred together. As a Commander—it was a good thing, he told himself. Less chance of winding up in a situation like Shou-Gurren again.

Or just more chance of winding up in one with more men under him.

More independence was never a bad thing, though, so he applied himself to the stew-like substance in the mess tent as best he could and tried to think optimistically. There were generally between four and six Commanders on the ground at any given time, as compared to twelve-to-eighteen colonels. He had some ideas about bridging Shou-Gurren…

* * *

By his next leave he hadn't yet wrangled his valley-spanning mission into reality yet, but while Heidegger didn't care about the attrition rate on the troops as such he wasn't actually _enthusiastic_ about sending battalions into the woodlands to get chewed up, and he was under pressure from the President to move the front forward. Sephiroth had every expectation of putting his plan into action during his next deployment. Rank was definitely useful.

Genesis and Angeal were summoned back to Midgar for the President's annual Solstice Ball, which Sephiroth's leave had of course already been scheduled to intersect. Sephiroth was permitted to attend in uniform, with a long tailored jacket over top to cover his bare arms and add a breadth to his shoulders that no one had when just barely fifteen no matter how strong, because this would serve as excellent propaganda for the glamor of SOLDIER First, but the purple jumpsuits of Seconds were declared 'tacky' and the new adolescent colonels obliged to acquire formal wear. Genesis of course had already had some. Angeal's was rented, but (at Genesis' insistence) from a place that altered the rented clothing for a better fit.

"I can't wait to make First," Angeal complained, fidgeting with a button.

"I am reliably informed these occasions are viper-pits. We shall watch each other's backs," Genesis proclaimed, settling his shirt-cuffs to precise symmetry before reaching for his gloves.

"Will we?" Sephiroth asked. He knew what that meant in battle; wasn't sure how it was meant to transfer to this.

"We've all saved each other's lives several times over now, Commander." Genesis' smirk was lazy and unconcerned. "Does that mean nothing to you?"

"You'd do the same for any comrade-in-arms, I would expect," Sephiroth said coolly. Genesis' smirk flickered toward a frown.

"We're friends," interceded Angeal firmly. Gave Sephiroth one of those long measuring looks of his. "Aren't we?"

The words tried to stick in his throat, but—"Yes," he admitted. "We are." Having said it, it was somehow easier to smile. "Did you really doubt it?"

Angeal smiled back, shrugged. "You're hard to read sometimes."

"What he means," Genesis drawled, "is that you're cold and standoffish and _rude_ , and we would hate to be a nuisance."

Genesis lived to make a nuisance of himself, and was one to talk about being rude. Sephiroth rolled his eyes. "If you're a nuisance to me, I will make sure you know. Angeal doesn't have to worry."

Blue eyes contemplated him narrowly for several seconds, and then Genesis' smirk came back, lying on his face more easily, somehow. "So brothers-in-arms to the skirmish shall we hence?"

"If by skirmish you mean 'confrontation with executives,' then by all means."

"I only _wish_ he'd meant there'd been a monster attack on the Plate and we were being dispatched," Angeal sighed, smoothing hair that was already perfectly smooth. "Rented suit and all. You're both naturals at this sort of thing."

Sephiroth wondered what sort of thing he meant. Genesis certainly seemed to have been born to attend parties, but anyone claiming Sephiroth was at his best in social situations deserved to be laughed out of the room. Angeal wasn't polished like Genesis, but from what Sephiroth had seen people instinctively liked him. Of less use in this kind of environment than others, admittedly, but still advantageous. "We're here to be decorative," he pointed out. It wasn't as if they were expected to negotiate business deals on Shinra's behalf or anything complex. "Just be yourself. You have nothing to be ashamed of."

Genesis grinned. "Just imagine though," he said, "the three of us leaping into battle in our party clothes…."

Sadly, this was not required. The closest they got to combat was Angeal bravely engaging in conversation an executive who kept touching Sephiroth's hair, and the bit where Hojo's latest second-in-command mysteriously fell into a punch bowl.

The exotic dancers arrived at eleven-thirty sharp, at which point it was permissible for a large category of guests to slip away. This included anyone under eighteen or attending with a spouse, unless the President was making an example of you and genially pressed you not to insult him by declining his hospitality. Since the young SOLDIERs' decorative function had been superseded, Shinra didn't mind if they left—probably preferred it. Overlapping the two display categories might rob each of impact.

Sephiroth was amused to see that even having drunk a slightly unwise quantity of wine, Genesis did not seem impressed by the dancers. He also didn't attempt to leave on his own, but Angeal drew him away without resistance, other than talking all the way out of the room. Apparently Genesis had _opinions_ about synchronized dance choreography.

* * *

Being a Commander meant doing a great deal more paperwork; Sephiroth had consequently been assigned his own office. It was a strange feeling—he'd had quarters of his own since officially enrolling in SOLDIER but even the postage-stamp-sized office space he'd been allotted sat on him strangely in a way those hadn't. Not merely a place for him to occupy when at rest, but a space in which to _function._ _His_ functional space, specifically.

The peace and quiet of the executive levels the morning after one of the President's parties made a pleasant work environment, and the settled feeling of being an _employee_ of the company, with his space and his salary, kept Sephiroth in a good mood through a stack of personnel reviews, a dreadful muddle of basic requisitions, and his latest attempt to make Form 863-B permute into a valid format for presenting his strategic opinions in a way more concrete than speaking up at meetings.

Toward the end of that, the Banorans knocked on his door.

They stayed in the doorway once it was open, crowding one another slightly but not much more than if they'd tried to fit into the minimal standing room inside, and crowding Sephiroth considerably less.

"Good morning, Angeal." Sephiroth contemplated Genesis. He wasn't visibly hung over. "Have you recovered from the fact that the President's dancers are hired for reasons other than their performance skills?"

"Yes, thank you. Though really, the money and location to arrange any command performance he wishes, and that's his selection? Dreadful waste."

"The President is a utilitarian." Which was not to say he did not indulge himself freely, but he gained far more power over his guests from an erotic dance troupe than he would from an edifying piece of theater, or even just a performance of Loveless. There were _reasons,_ Sephiroth knew, that Hojo was someone the President relied upon, and in spite of his personality came close to trusting. Their priorities might not be quite the same, but they were similar enough to understand each other.

Genesis waved their employer and his taste in party entertainment away like a bad smell. "Anyway, on to the reason we came here."

"Which is?" He wasn't unhappy to see them, precisely, but they were invading his comfortable islet of solitude and he hoped they didn't intend to stay long.

"Genesis had a drunken idea that he still likes now that he's sober." Angeal paused, then admitted, "I like it too."

Sephiroth was honestly unsure whether Angeal liking an idea balanced out the fact that Genesis had dreamed it up while drunk. "Say on."

Genesis' smile was broad and airy as he slouched against the door frame. "To celebrate making it through our first deployment alive, Angeal and I are becoming blood brothers. Since you're rather our partner in life-saving, we wondered if you wanted to join in?"

Sephiroth…didn't know what to feel. He only vaguely recognized the term, and it seemed like this should be something important, significant, between two friends who'd known each other so long. But the easy way Genesis invited him to join in suggested it wasn't important at all, and his inability to tell what mattered and what didn't outside battle or the lab was one of the reasons Sephiroth had never spent much time around other SOLDIERs. There was rarely much space between the stiffness of their divide in either age or rank, and the inclination to take advantage of his idiosyncratic patches of ignorance to trick him into humiliating himself, and that space had usually been occupied by hangers-on and scammers. It was generally safest to assume nothing was important.

"…you're sixteen," he pointed out at last, setting down his pen. "Isn't that some kind of children's game?"

"It's an _ancient warrior tradition,_ " said Genesis.

"I'm not sure about that," said Angeal, "but it's done a lot on the Western Continent, even by adults."

They weren't _from_ the Western Continent, but Angeal never lied. "And the duties of a blood brother are…"

"About the same as those of any brother, I guess? Maybe a little more stringent since we're taking it on voluntarily. Keep an eye on one another, help one another learn from our mistakes, always have each other's backs against the rest of the world."

Genesis smirked. "Actually spend time together, attempt to amend one another's cultural deficiencies…"

"Listen to each other recite _the same lines_ for the _thousandth time_ …"

Sephiroth waited for his friends to stop sharing a smile before saying, "Those seem similar to the duties of a friend?"

Genesis rolled his eyes and muttered something indistinct about _duty_ but Angeal said, "The idea is we're promising never to stop." And. Well.

Sephiroth could admit to himself that going back to before this pair had barreled their way into his life sounded…bleak. "Alright," he said.

Angeal looked as startled as he did delighted.

* * *

They took over one of the training rooms in the middle of the night. The equipment and power was shut down and the room was lit only by the tiny fire in a metal basin Angeal had carefully lit. Sephiroth had never seen light _move_ like this, not when it wasn't part of the chaos of battle, and he stared into it so deeply he almost jolted when Genesis whispered, " _ready?_ "

Sephiroth nodded and drew the katana he'd picked up at Shou-Gurren from its sheath, and laid it across his knees. Genesis had his out already, an ornate red-chased glyph-blade he'd named Rapier even though it wasn't, and Angeal pulled his family sword from his back, pressed it briefly against his forehead, and propped it against the front of his folded legs, blunt side on the floor and keen, polished edge up.

Simultaneously, they each dragged both thumbs along the sharp edges, slicing deep under the skin, and then raised their hands and slotted fingers together, pressing the bleeding pads of their thumbs together hard, blood mingling.

Angeal ran a few degrees hotter than Sephiroth, and Genesis somewhere in between, and the press of their bleeding fingers together drew it to his attention as never before. It stung, the pressure and having someone else's blood in even such a tiny wound; it was dreadfully unhygienic and the sense of rebellion against Hojo at contaminating his fussed-over blood made Sephiroth want to laugh. He met Angeal's eyes, then Genesis', and they seemed to be feeling the same faint, reckless hilarity.

"It's a promise," Genesis whispered.

"A promise," Angeal echoed, Sephiroth half a beat behind.

They let go when the burn of injury started to be replaced by the burn of mako-enhanced healing, and Genesis sprang grandly to his feet. "Alright, I'm the eldest brother, that means I make all the decisions."

Sephiroth stared up at him, betrayal settling in his chest. Why had he _ever_ considered believing that all of this had been anything but a stratagem to gain control over him? A _stupid_ one, considering that unless their little blood-sharing ceremony had been some kind of unheard-of magical ritual there was nothing forcing him to observe the terms of the agreement—

Angeal was laughing. "Don't listen to Gen," he told Sephiroth. "That isn't even how _real_ brothers work, he just can't resist a chance to make himself sound more important. Sit down," he told Genesis, who did.

Sephiroth eyed him distrustfully. "I don't," he said firmly, "require anyone else making decisions for me. Also I still outrank you."

"Give me time," Genesis sniffed. As though he had even come close to winning a spar since they arrived. Angeal _had_ technically defeated him, but sword-shattering was not exactly a recognized technique, it had been an accident, and it wouldn't work twice.

* * *

Hollander reportedly went into hysterics at Angeal's next physical. Something about genetic markers; Sephiroth got nothing straightforward on the subject. Anyway the professor got Angeal to admit that he might have gotten Sephiroth's blood in an open wound—between training and campaigning together that wasn't exactly shocking, even if Sephiroth was so rarely injured he had used his Limit Break all of thrice in his life, one of them under laboratory conditions.

Hojo was probably incapable of hysterics, but he was on the issue like a shark scenting blood. Sephiroth admitted when questioned that he couldn't swear he hadn't gotten any of Angeal's blood in a wound at the same time, and his next tour of duty was pushed back three weeks.

So. Many. Tests. Of course they weren't told the conclusions, apart from being reminded that blood-borne disease was serious and one of the risk factors increased by their SOLDIER enhancements, and to avoid such contamination in future, and if it occurred to decontaminate the area immediately. Sephiroth mentally edited that to 'as soon as possible' because war rarely let you attend to any form of treatment 'immediately,' but he had never seen Hojo so taken-aback by readings, so he supposed it was serious.

Oddly, Hollander didn't seem to notice anything at all odd about Genesis' blood. "My genetics are more robust," he bragged next time they were alone.

Angeal threw a cracker at him. "If Sephiroth and I are dying and it's all the fault of your stupid romantic ideas…" he said, seeming curiously unconcerned by the possibility.

"I doubt we're dying," Sephiroth shrugged. Leaned over to take one of Angeal's crackers because if he was throwing them at people he clearly wasn't very hungry. "Hojo would have been angrier." He paused, considered. "Or laughed harder."

"I am so desperately glad not to be you," said Genesis. And stole one of Angeal's crackers.

* * *

They found out that Genesis' genetics were not so robust after all in probably the worst possible way.

The General had been dead by the time Sephiroth got back to Wutai, and his replacement was less competent but more confident, and very much Heidegger's man. Casualties were rising. They still hadn't taken or gotten past Shou-Gurren.

It took another four months to get his operation set up. Over half of that was maneuvering for approval, but it took a full month to get all the physical pieces arranged and shipped. Training to make sure it would all go together smoothly and efficiently took less than three weeks.

At the end of that time, two helicopters dipped their way across the Shou-Gurren valley, flying as fast and high as was possible, burdened as they were. Once they'd reached the far side, they released four steel poles, solid straight through but cored in lead near the bottom, back-hooked like harpoons, and wickedly sharp at the lower ends.

As soon as these had buried themselves deep in the earth and partway into stone, they were followed by two squads of SOLDIERs, sixteen men in total: Two Firsts, ten Seconds, and four Thirds. The Thirds and two of the Seconds were the ones who'd practiced the maneuver most; the rest of the unit formed a defensive line around them; prepared to step in if the technical specialists fell, but primarily here to defend.

Grappling hooks thudded into the dirt at their feet, fired by a pair of pneumatic grappling guns Sephiroth had known Weapons Development had but had never produced for the market. The SOLDIERs on construction duty picked the cables up and started pulling and clipping, and then bent to pry up the next set of grapping hooks. Six minutes after the sixteen of them had dropped, ten strong cables were strung across the valley and firmly fixed at each end, and from each end the building teams set forth toward the middle, unwinding reels of steel mesh and affixing its edges to the parabola of the lowest pair of cables, running shorter wire spans upward to the higher suspension cables and reinforcing the mesh deck with rigid, hollow steel bars at intervals. The version tested near Kalm had been able, on completion, to support a small truck.

The bridge-building was almost entirely a SOLDIER operation, relying for its feasibility on their enhanced abilities and the relative self-sufficiency these allowed. Even more than ten years after the inception of the program, Shinra's tactics did not take full advantage of SOLDIER potential. Sephiroth had hand-picked a team of Thirds who were good with materia and it was now their duty to hold overlapping magical and physical barriers under the construction zone. As the bridge wove together, they spread out along its length, protecting it. When anyone's strength ran low, they held up a hand and were replaced, and only then let their spell falter.

The whole process took no more than fifty minutes, and at the end of it there was a fairly sturdy steel suspension bridge across the valley. It was still a point of vulnerability, but nothing like the precarious earlier attempts at bridges Shinra had attempted, to catastrophe.

There had been sporadic attacks from the valley below throughout, but Barrier only worked in one direction and the hail of bullets that consistently rained onto the source of any attack seemed to have had a suppressing effect. By the time the troops started marching, rows of four shoulder-to-shoulder flowing up the steel span, it had been long enough since there had been any fire from below that it seemed reasonably possible they had withdrawn.

Sephiroth knew that even if they had left the valley, they would not have given up. He stood ready in the semicircle of defenders, the Thirds to his left and right almost buzzing with tension and annoying him badly. They were about his own age, a little older, but they struck him as dreadfully young. Even Genesis was more mature.

The Wutaians waited until they had about a quarter of their force across to attack.

Personally Sephiroth thought they should have moved earlier, but possibly they were overconfident—assumed they could win, and wanted to make sure their enemies' losses were significant enough to dissuade them from trying this again. Their onslaught was certainly impressive.

Godo was back, but he arrowed straight toward Genesis—the pink sword might be almost as good as Sephiroth's hair for marking the bearer out to those carrying grudges—which led Sephiroth to assume the sorceress had been a personal friend or Kisaragi clanswoman, since this was only Genesis' third deployment and the second had been dull. Sephiroth would have liked a rematch, but he had his position to hold, guarding the bridge and the steady stream of reinforcements coming from behind.

The duel between Genesis and Godo was the sort of drawn-out, dramatic, nearly-even match that belonged in a play, not a real battlefield. Sephiroth saw very little of it, but he did notice that it had ended abortively, with no clear victor, as Godo swept across the field to protect a pair of fighters no older than Sephiroth had been when he first went to war—Godo vanished shortly afterward, and so did the children, so presumably they had not been authorized to join this attack.

Into his place stepped a trio of fighters, two armed with swords and one with shuriken. Genesis took one of the swordsmen down early with a lucky blow, but then found himself stymied. Sephiroth spun and blocked and cut and wished intently for a larger weapon—the one he had taken from the ninja woman during the battle in the valley was of good forging, but he could wish it at least half a meter longer to extend his reach.

Angeal was being pressed hard on the far side of the formation, he glimpsed during one turn, not by any single great fighter but by incompetent formation-neighbors and thus a sheer press of numbers. The sword across his back was serving again as additional armor. He would be better served by a partner fighting at his back, but as he could not have that just now….

Angeal and Sephiroth felt it at the same moment—a fraction of an instant after it happened—a sword that did not exist sliding between their ribs.

It was cold, and the pain was incredible. Sephiroth had rarely felt a blade inside his chest while fully conscious, and never one so large or carelessly placed. He turned, automatically, to find Genesis slipping onto one knee, blood already bubbling onto his lips. A shuriken sliced along Angeal's temple and he didn't even flinch, though it seemed to shake him out of his instant of transfixed horror and remind him to start defending himself again, as he carved his way toward Genesis and the ninja-tou that had been thrust through his torso.

The ninja pulled his sword out.

The pain vanished with it, and Genesis hit the ground. The masked fighter raised his weapon for a finishing blow.

Sephiroth saw…not red. He had heard the idiom before, and if it fitted any moment it should have been this one. Red was Genesis' favored color and the color of his blood, and this was Sephiroth's brother by a voluntary oath being taken from him and anger was a red emotion.

Not red. The world had turned almost—white. He was used to being faster than those around him, but it felt as though the Wutaians between himself and Genesis were standing still in a line to be cut down. As if, had he not been in such a hurry to reach his destination, he could have taken his time killing them. He didn't.

The ninja that had felled Genesis had not been taking his time, but Sephiroth severed his arm before the second blow could fall.

Angeal was down on one knee. Sephiroth beheaded the ninja he had already disarmed, and the red-gold light of a Phoenix Down glowed briefly. Genesis must have stopped breathing. Green healing glowed. Angeal swore. That was never a promising thing to hear following medical intervention.

He glanced down, and Genesis was breathing—but he was also bleeding. His wound showed no sign of having been healed. Angeal had to lunge to his feet to deflect a shuriken coming from the direction Sephiroth was not covering, but the Restore was warming green again on his right wrist.

The gaps he and Angeal had left in the line were being felt; no one had broken through to the bridge yet but troopers were falling faster than they should and if either of the eager Thirds that were struggling to fill his place were to fall, the line would break. Well, then. They would simply have to ensure that there was no one left to break it.

Sephiroth lifted his sword in one hand and raised the energy of an Ice materia to fill the other, and spun into battle as though scattering raindrops.

* * *

That there were still enemies left alive to retreat could be honestly at least half attributed to the fact that Sephiroth had been unwilling to leave the range of Shinra's defensive line by more than five meters. The five battalions of troops they had formed up for this operation had all crossed the valley, and setting up defensive positions; a sixth was on its way with equipment and cannons to set up a secure perimeter. Once those were in place, even if the bridge fell again the Wutai would not easily push Shinra back beyond the valley.

Shou-Gurren had been overcome. After most of a year looking forward to this accomplishment, Sephiroth was utterly disinterested in it now that it was achieved. Even as his troops sent up a cheer, he was crossing the bridge again, following Angeal, who was following the stretcher carrying Genesis.

Sephiroth somehow forced his way onto the medical transport going back to Midgar. It was probably a form of desertion and definitely dereliction of duty, but unless the Wutai had something truly terrible in reserve he wasn't actually _needed_ on the ground just now, and that sort of thing wasn't punished in the upper levels the way it was with enlisted men. He could still feel the cold steel sliding into his chest the way it had not actually done; he was prepared to bluff his way as far as he could.

This turned out to be right to the doors of the Science Department emergency operating theater, where after about twenty minutes Professor Hollander came out and walked over to him and Angeal. "We've got Genesis stabilized," he told Angeal. "For now."

Sephiroth felt strangely invisible as Angeal said, "What do you mean 'for now?'"

"The complications aren't something we can fix just like that." Hollander shook his head. "With the right combination of Cure and Esuna we should be able to get him fit for duty again," Hollander said. "But first he'll need some blood."

Sephiroth stepped forward to volunteer, but he hadn't even completed the motion before Hollander was glowering at him. "You've done _enough_." He looked toward Angeal. "It's not ideal, but…" He beckoned, and Angeal came with him.

This left Sephiroth alone to haunt the Shinra building as unobtrusively as possible in case someone noticed he should be in Wutai, and work his way through reams of paperwork that actually belonged to one of the Commanders assigned to Midgar, who had clearly been avoiding his responsibilities and therefore could hardly file a complaint about having his desk raided, trying not to think about _you've done enough_ and the way it had been the precise opposite of a reassurance. Or about the feeling of a sword entering his chest.

He took a break an hour and a half in to wash off some of the blood. It had been too dry already to stain the papers, but the smell was starting to annoy him.

Angeal was more intelligent than people looking at the bulk of his shoulders tended to expect, and he kept his ears open, and that evening he was able to tell Sephiroth the damning truth: Genesis had developed some rare genetic imbalance that was inhibiting his body's ability to heal. And it was because of contamination from Sephiroth, the marks of which had been hidden, at first, because instead of the contaminants being incorporated into his cells as they had in Angeal's his system had locked itself into an intense immunological struggle. One which it was now losing.

Genesis was dying.

The only bright spot was that even Hojo didn't seem to have realized they had done it _on purpose_ , and that was not very bright at all. Sephiroth was tempted to confess just so someone might punish him.

Angeal didn't seem inclined to do so. "It was his idea," his dark-haired friend murmured sometime around midnight, after hours sitting on one of the benches on the SOLDIER floor, drawn and silent. "It was his idea." He'd had his sword propped against his shoulder the whole time, one hand folded up to grip the hilt so that his arm wrapped around the blade like a child with a favorite comfort object, and now he swung it up with an easy twist of the wrist to set the base against his forehead, eyes clenched just a little too tight to seem serene. "But _I_ _encouraged him._ "

"Angeal…" Sephiroth mumbled.

"It's not your fault," Angeal told him without opening his eyes. "It's not your fault, Sephiroth." He lowered the sword. "You haven't done anything. It's not your fault."

"It's not your fault," Sephiroth echoed back. He didn't think Angeal believed it any more than he had.

The feeling was more like losing too many men in an engagement than like anything else he had ever felt, but it wasn't very much like that. This wasn't chagrin and regret, this _ached_. The two childhood friends had reached out their hands and included him, made him their _brother,_ and in the same moment, unknowingly, he had killed Genesis. Hot rage gathered under his tongue and ran down his throat like acid, and there were no enemies left to kill.

* * *

"I'm so very sorry," Sephiroth told Genesis the first time he was allowed to see him. The echo of that first day, when he hadn't even understood that the other SOLDIERs might be trying to be friendly, let alone potential friends, woke the phantom stab wound between his ribs. It was in the other side of his chest from where Angeal's shrapnel had landed, and despite the fact that that wound had been real and this was not, he felt more injured now than he had then.

Genesis' gesture of dismissal was much more fluid and flourishing than his own had been. "Nonsense, my brother in arms. It wasn't _your_ fault." In case the stress laid on _your_ had not been clear enough, Genesis suggested with his eyebrows that he knew precisely whose fault it was. And he didn't mean himself, not that Genesis was ever the type to blame himself for anything.

Well, it was first and foremost the Science Department's for not informing SOLDIER of the possibility of their giving one another bizarre genetic conditions until it was too late. Sephiroth hadn't _actually_ poisoned Genesis' blood under combat conditions, but it was easily possible he could have. It was actually somewhat surprising Genesis was the first to fall ill, considering how frequently SOLDIERs bled on each other…

Sephiroth met Genesis' eyes, and he understood. Looked over at Angeal, to check that he had figured it out as well, but he knew Genesis better and had spent more time eavesdropping on Hollander; of course he had.

"Once I get out of here," Genesis said easily, "what do you think of all three of us going for lunch somewhere that isn't the cafeteria? I didn't think anything but army rations could be worse than that slop, and yet here I have learned differently."

"I grew up on this food," Sephiroth said mildly. "I assure you the nutritional balance is calculated to a nicety."

"Well, if it will help him grow up to be like you," Angeal said with heavy irony that didn't seem aimed at anyone in particular.

Genesis knew something about his condition that the Science Department didn't want him to share.

He was going to tell them anyway.

* * *

Project G. It was somehow no real surprise to learn that Hollander had been running some grand variation on the SOLDIER experiment with Genesis and Angeal—he'd always taken charge of them, especially Angeal. Sephiroth had never thought much about it, but given the information it felt profoundly natural. Of course. Of _course_ they weren't just taking to enhancement unusually well, of course they weren't _just_ talented. Of course the Science Department had been up to something.

"Our contracts allow for it," Genesis added as a side note, stabbing his pasta viciously in the padded booth they'd taken in the mid-grade Corel-style restaurant they'd selected near the edge of the Sector Four plate. The randomized selection was hopefully making life harder for any Turks interested in monitoring them. "The language is phrased to sound like it's just meant to avoid needing new release forms every time they refine the SOLDIER process, but actually we've given permission to do absolutely anything to our bodies in the name of science."

Sephiroth was quite sure he had never signed any forms. The Science Department had taught him how to write in the first place. Perhaps his mother had signed them before she died. He consumed his own noodle dish without comment.

"But why didn't it affect me the same way?" Angeal asked quietly. He alone wasn't eating—it was strange, Sephiroth thought, how Genesis acted and reacted his way through life, building dramas out of minor incidents, and now was treating his own impending death with exactly the same flair. The emotional pitch had probably changed, Sephiroth thought it had, but he was not a good judge of such things, and knew it. The point was, his _behavior_ was almost unaltered. While Angeal, who weathered most trials with the same dogged fluctuation between grimness and good humor, was _changed_ by this, changed visibly. He was _affected_.

"Chance?" Genesis shook his head. "Ask Hollander. Maybe it will give him a new idea."

* * *

The war was different when they got back to it—Sephiroth thought at first it was a change in his own attitude, but realized before long that there was a new deference in the way his comrades reacted to him, a new terror from his enemies. A new, almost obsequious air from his commanding officer that occasionally flared with resentment. He hoped they got a new general soon. This one was a waste of skin, and it was not made up for by the fact that he was one of the earliest surviving SOLDIERs.

Between having abandoned his own defensive strategy for emotional reasons and the fact that Genesis' condition was his fault, Sephiroth could take very little pride in his achievements regarding Shou-Gurren, so he ignored the new respect as much as possible. It grated, especially from soldiers older than himself—which was still most of them.

He and Angeal fought back to back now whenever they could, and Sephiroth could not decide whether he was imagining that they were oddly well synchronized, as if he simply _knew_ where his blood brother was without having to look. A whisper in the bottom of his mind that mirrored the way Genesis' pain in the instant of taking a mortal wound had been somehow contagious.

Perhaps they had imagined that, too, and this was just the result of familiarity and keen reflexes. He didn't say anything about it to Angeal.

They were gaining territory again, step by bloody, grueling step. He wondered what it would take to get the Wutai to surrender. He wondered if he could do whatever it was.

Of course, even if the war ended, that didn't mean his friends would be safe.

They put Genesis back on missions two weeks after his injury. Monster-hunting on the Eastern continent, mostly. At least he hadn't been sent back to Wutai yet, but it was only a matter of time. "Hollander says if I stay on the casualty lists much longer the department will pull his time and funding for the problem," the red-haired colonel told Angeal over the phone when they called him from base camp, with Sephiroth listening in beside him. "I'm only a Second, after all, there are hundreds of me; my _potential_ doesn't count for anything if I'm going to die. But if I stay useful…"

Angeal put his fist through the wall. The other soldiers using the communications room startled and looked around, but when they saw him extricating his fist carefully from the splinters of cheap plyboard clearly realized he'd gotten bad news and returned to their own business. (Sephiroth was looking forward to the day when the pocket-sized phone units the top executives carried in Midgar were improved to the point that they were useful from this kind of distance. He was sure he would be able to get use of one even if the President decided against general distribution. And then, privacy.) "This company," Angeal said quietly. It wasn't a hiss, or a growl—even his facial expression was only a few degrees more thunderous than 'grim'—but the feelings came through clearly anyway.

"…yes, quite," said Genesis from the other end of the line. "I swear, some days for five gil I'd pitch every department but SOLDIER into the sea."

Sephiroth lifted the telephone handset neatly from Angeal's grasp and put it to his own ear. "Come, the troopers give good service."

"True," Genesis agreed. "Very well, all active military may stay clear of the drink."

"Unlikely," replied Sephiroth, and Genesis burst out laughing.

He stopped pretty quickly, his left lung still weak, but his mood didn't turn down too sharply at the reminder. "Did you hear that, Angeal?" he called, loud enough that Angeal probably could hear it, although his grim expression had barely lightened. "He made a joke! We have to go out drinking in celebration next time you two are in Midgar!"

The fact that he could probably do that if he chose was still a new idea, but Sephiroth gave an agreeable hum. "If your condition allows for that sort of thing," he said.

"Oh, it should," Genesis said airily. "My wound reopens occasionally, but so long as I keep a Heal and a Restore on me and use them proactively I'm perfectly functional."

A flesh wound that would not heal would be one thing. This had run through his _lung._

"Don't push yourself," Sephiroth directed.

Genesis snorted. "I'm assigned to Midgar, SOLDIER Commander Sephiroth, I'm not under your command." A pause in which he probably rolled his eyes. "I don't plan to take risks," he allowed. "Put Angeal back on?"

* * *

They didn't get drinks next time Sephiroth and Angeal had leave. Genesis was back in medical when they got to Midgar.

The stack of books beside his bed when they visited stood testament to how accustomed he was getting to being confined. Sephiroth supposed it was better for this to happen to Genesis than Angeal from that perspective; he was worse at stillness but had much more tolerance for lack of physical activity.

"I've been catching up on culture," Genesis explained when he saw Sephiroth looking. He was dressed in a magenta buttoned shirt and had his hair styled, but was reclining in his hospital bed propped on pillows, bedclothes pulled over his lap, and hadn't tried to sit up straight when they came in. "Amazing how much more reading you can get done as an invalid than on active duty."

"These aren't even all about _Loveless,_ " Angeal observed, a book in each hand as he studied their spines.

"I do read other things," Genesis sniffed.

Angeal shuffled through the stack for a few seconds and came up with three different editions of the work itself. Raised his eyebrows.

"Shut up." Genesis turned away from his oldest friend—as best he could without moving his torso too much—and gave all his attention to Sephiroth instead. "You remember the premise of _Loveless,_ right?"

As if anyone could avoid memorizing the particulars if they spent any time at all around Rhapsodos. "Three friends," said Sephiroth, and he'd suspected for some time that part of the reason Genesis had been so amenable to Angeal's desire to befriend him was it had meant that his life would be a little more like his literary idol. "One died, one flew away…the one that was left became a hero." He shrugged. "A common story."

"Not really." Genesis shifted a little against his pillows, as if hoping a change in angle would ease pain he wasn't admitting to but was failing to hide. "At least not until it spawned imitators. _Loveless_ takes its depth partly from its age—people refer to the novel as the original and the play as derivative, but the play leans on the older epic poem for elements of form as well as story. Friends parting and being reunited, often tragically, is a common theme from the era, but…"

He had to pause to catch his breath. Sephiroth's own chest ached faintly, but that was just emotion. "But those are usually pairs to begin with. Larger groups of friends generally _come together_ over the course of a narrative, to act as support for the hero. _Loveless_ is unusual in that the hero _loses_ his comrades and then leaves the story altogether, as the narrative concerns itself with the despair and rage of the wanderer and the inner conflict of the prisoner. Many scholars theorize that the poem was written as a supplement to a more conventional existing work, now lost."

That was actually vaguely interesting. "So even the original is a derivative work," Sephiroth said thoughtfully.

Genesis' smile was pained. "Everything is."

Sephiroth frowned a little. This was one of the times it sounded as though there was some other message behind the overt one, but he couldn't decipher it.

"How bad is it, really?" Angeal asked abruptly, grim and blank, and—Angeal didn't _do_ that; he could be forbidding but Sephiroth had never considered him any better than Genesis at not broadcasting his feelings to the vicinity. Well. Perhaps a bit better than Genesis.

This time the smile was thin as a Wutaian blade. "Hollander says if he hasn't had a breakthrough in six weeks, my course of treatment will be switched to palliative care. The plus side is that Shinra will cover all the drugs I need for four months. If I take longer than that to die the paperwork to requisition painkillers gets challenging."

This unfeeling corporate fact lay on the rumbled blanket like the gutted husk of an insectoid monster, obdurately existing despite everyone's distinct preferences.

Angeal and Sephiroth shared a look across the bed. It was uncomfortable enough that Genesis would probably use the word 'anguished.' _Say something,_ Sephiroth thought. He had never wished more to be telepathic, although he could be fairly sure the slight, unsurprised widening of Angeal's eyes meant something like _no, you_ even without confirmed psychic powers.

"They had a man in here talking about my pension the other day," Genesis drawled. He was only just seventeen, his pension ought to be a concern as remote to him as the stars. "They'll pay it out to my designated next of kin for twenty years. It's a pittance, since I've only been in the service a few years, but the circumstances count as dying in action so there's a bonus for that. I don't want my parents to get it, Goddess knows they have all the money they need, so I've amended my paperwork to designate the two of you the beneficiaries, as adopted siblings. If I don't make it—"

"You can't just—" Angeal broke in.

"It's not _charity,_ Angeal, I'm spiting my father—"

"I don't _care_ about whether it's _charity_ ," Angeal snapped. "Stop talking like you're sure you're going to die."

"I'm not sure," Genesis said after a moment. "But since I don't have any means, just now, of planning to survive, I'm making plans for the event of my death." He frowned. "You _could_ be grateful, Angeal, if you can't manage supportive."

"Grateful." The flatness didn't belong in Angeal's voice. His fist clenched. "You have a plan," he said firmly. It wasn't so much an accusation—it was a demand, this is how the world _must_ be, I cannot accept it otherwise. "To survive. Let me know when you're ready to share it."

With that, he left the room, Buster-style sword wide across his stiff back. He was nearly seventeen, now, and had almost grown into his shoulders.

"He's going to regret that exit if I take a turn for the worst overnight and perish tragically," Genesis remarked into the silence left behind.

Sephiroth turned to stare at him. "You are resigned," he said, and this was accusatory.

Genesis looked aside. "Not really." The corner of his mouth curled, eyes on the door. "One walked away," he murmured.

That blank silver feeling that had come over Sephiroth on the battlefield when Genesis took his wound teased at the edges of his consciousness, but there was no enemy here to devastate. "I don't want your pension."

Genesis flicked his fingers. "Well, give it all to Angeal then—I daresay he needs it more, he's paid less than you and forever sending his pay home to his mother in her dirt-floored shack. He'd have been even more impossible if I'd tried to give it just to him, though." He narrowed his eyes sharply. "Not that it will matter, if I survive. Which I fully intend to do, damn you. But what can I be expected to do about it from here?"

Sephiroth looked down at the stack of books. "You could be studying the relevant science, instead of the history of literature."

"And in a few months of study from my bed crack the problem that several doctorates who _created_ it are stymied by?"

Sephiroth shrugged. A slim chance, but surely better than none.

"I can't even get access to the data!" Genesis expostulated. "My biology is _above my clearance level._ "

That, he admitted, was an obstacle, but as it was a practical one it was also something that could be addressed and surmounted. Spiting Hojo sounded at the moment like an excellent side benefit to any efforts to that end, rather than a drawback. Even if it hadn't been, this was his doing; he could risk more than Hojo for his brother. "I can try to get it for you. How have you been getting your books?"

Genesis looked annoyed for a further moment before lapsing back into exaggerated weary tolerance. "They assigned me a permanent aide during my first convalescence; I'm now on indefinite leave and they've stopped sending me paperwork—thank the Goddess, I would throw it in their faces and laugh if they tried it now—but no one's reassigned the boy."

"SOLDIER?" Sephiroth asked.

"Cadet. Redhead from Mideel, enthusiastic about sharing a continent of origin. Anyway he's tolerably adept at fetching things from libraries."

Sephiroth nodded. "Introduce us." Someone who was expected to be carrying Genesis books and papers would be less likely to draw suspicion. He wondered how you went about vetting a soldier for trustworthiness in interdepartmental subterfuge.

"That's your strategist voice," Genesis observed. "You're plotting on my behalf. My hero." The irony dripped.

"Someone has to." Angeal would help. Genesis would too, presumably. He wasn't actually self-destructive, Sephiroth didn't think. Only bitter.

Genesis chuckled, fingers straying over the embossed cover of one of his volumes. "You know, in the old stories…things like 'The Golden Chocobo' and 'Goddess Catches the Moon,' where there are three brothers that go out to seek their fortunes…the eldest always fails first, and worst, and the youngest is always the hero." He covered his eyes with one hand. "Perhaps I should have taken it as a warning."

"I'm no hero," said Sephiroth, because his idea of a hero might be vague but it certainly didn't describe a fifteen-year-old who felt most comfortable doing paperwork alone in a cubicle and got everyone around him killed, whatever the trashy puff articles published after the bridging of Shou-Gurren might suggest. "But we're _not going to let you die._ "

* * *

 _ **A/N:** I'm assuming Shinra went through a lot of Generals before Sephiroth, because srsly. Like the Union in the US Civil War, only instead of becoming a famously corrupt President, their final contestant declared himself the Chosen One, died, and then tried to kill everyone and fuse with their life energy to become a god. Also Angeal has to have had positive role models in the service, to believe in the honor of SOLDIER as he did. _

_Genesis in canon was convinced S-cells held the secret to curing his degradation because Sephiroth was (physically) stable, but given the sample from Zack turned his copy into a raving mutant monster and that his whole medical crisis may have been a result of latent Cetra genes clashing with Jenova cells, I'm pretty sure he was very very wrong._

 _His literary lecture is my attempt to make sense of the vast amount of contradictory information about Loveless. Literally no fact we are given is at all compatible with more than three other facts. ^^ 'Goddess Catches the Moon' is a folk tale derived from a Cetra story originally learned from the Planet itself about how Gaia got the moon I assume it has, because the beaches say tide lines say tidal forces say major satellite._

 _Sephiroth does paperwork to de-stress for several reasons, but especially because the most relaxed I have ever seen him is that one scene in Crisis Core where he's holding a clipboard. ^^_


	4. Eldest

**_not one before another IV_**

 _ **A/N:** I think this counts as the least-AUish AU here, both because it's set latest in the timeline and because nobody actually acquires any siblings they did not already have.  
_

* * *

The Turks told them where to find Mother. It wasn't even because they tortured them—the black-suits were kinda tough, Loz would give them that. Hurting them might never have worked. But the yellow-hair girl liked to talk, and when they left her alone with her boss after working them both over for a while, she took less time than it took Loz to get bored waiting for her to reassure him that the President had the item safe with him.

" _Elena,_ " said her partner, but it was too late.

(The red man came and got the Turks out after that, but it didn't matter anymore, which was probably why Kadaj hadn't done anything with them already.)

There were only two black-suits protecting the President in his little treehouse, and when Loz pulled him out of his chair and threw him on the ground—there she was. Everything they needed fitted into a little black box. _Mother._ They left the Shinra people on the floor and turned to go—white-President lunged up from the floor and started shooting at Kadaj, the bigger darker Turk (Loz-Turk, Yazoo'd called him) lurched up and flung a punch, and the red one electrocuted Yazoo's ankle.

The Shinra didn't manage to hurt Mother, or take her back. The three brothers got on their bikes and rode, hard and fast and far, with joy filling their chests to bursting, and finally stopped when they got out to the badlands where they could park on a high bluff and see in every direction, so no one could sneak up on them.

Kadaj was smiling all over his face as he turned to the other two, punched the air with the hand not holding onto Mother. "We did it! _Yes!_ "

" _Yeah!_ " said Loz.

Yazoo didn't say anything, but he was smiling.

"And now it's almost time for the Reunion," announced Kadaj. "We'll meet Sephiroth, and find all the children, and then our whole family can finally be together."

"Yeah," said Loz. He was smiling too. _Reunion._

"Then, I guess…" Kadaj peeled at the yellow seal, and then carefully eased the box open. His face fell. "Mother?" he asked.

Loz leaned in. It was—just her hand. Lying in mako like a pickle. He wanted to cry, but—not quite. Mother had wanted them to come to her, even if she couldn't look at them like this, or talk to them in their ears instead of their hearts. What were hands good for, that mothers could do?

"I guess she wants to touch us," he said, and Kadaj took a sharp little breath and nodded.

"Yes. Yes, of course, you're right." Carefully, he reached into the box, picked Mother up by the wrist. Leaned over, across two sets of handlebars, and pressed her palm into Yazoo's throat, above his coat, just under his chin. A curl of black smoke rose up and Yazoo breathed in too, sharper and hard.

"Mother," he whispered.

Kadaj turned to Loz, and Loz tipped his chin up but he didn't have to really, because his coat opened further than Yazoo's and Mother touched him on the chest, the flat part just below the neck and _oh._ His little breath might be more like a sob. It hurt, he wasn't even really surprised that it hurt, like fire drilling into his chest and running out in little lines all the way through him, but it was _good_ hurt, it felt right, it meant everything was _going to be alright now,_ because he was with Mother and she was with him and they were never going to be apart ever again.

Kadaj took Mother's hand away, and smiled at him. "Just me now."

Mother reached for Kadaj's throat, and Loz was about ready to cry from _happy_ which he hadn't even known was a thing you could feel this much, and there was more smoke this time which was not really weird because Kadaj was the most important, and.

And Mother's hand disappeared.

And Kadaj bent over, curling up, like maybe more smoke meant more pain.

And he stood up again taller than he'd ever been, and his hair falling longer and not Kadaj at all.

Loz was too surprised to do anything but gape. "Sephiroth," breathed Yazoo.

And this was—great, it really was, even if Loz had never been as interested in their big brother as Kadaj, but Kadaj wasn't supposed to be _gone._ It was supposed to be _all of them together._

Sephiroth turned and walked away. Within a few steps, he was rising into the air, and going faster every second.

Loz's throat closed. "A-Aniki!" he called out through it. "Wait up!" He and Yazoo were on their bikes and riding simultaneously, in seconds, but Sephiroth already had a lead on them. He wasn't waiting. "Where are you going?" Loz tried, because as long as they could meet up later it would be fine. Kadaj had always liked to go off on his own a lot. He just—usually he told them where to meet him again, or they already knew where he'd be coming back to.

Sephiroth kept flying—he wasn't even pretending to walk anymore—like he hadn't heard. Loz gunned the engine. " _Aniki!_ "

Yazoo was right beside him still. Loz groped for his gun, pulled it free and fired it into the air. " ** _Aniki!_** " he roared, " _Sephiroth!"_ and kept shooting until their oldest brother finally turned.

Just like that, he was in front of them, _right in front,_ and Loz spun out and his bike went over, skidding. He planted his free hand and caught himself and almost tried to catch his bike too, but realized Sephiroth was more important and just relaxed his legs and let it go, pinwheeling out across the dirt on its side until it hit a rock. Yazoo managed to dodge without crashing, and circled back around to where Loz was lying on the ground, Sephiroth hovering just above.

"Where are you going?" Loz asked, now that he had his biggest brother's attention.

Sephiroth's eyes looked straight through him even when he was looking at him. "Even if you ask that, it doesn't matter."

Yazoo idled to a halt just behind Loz. "As your brothers," he told Sephiroth, "we want to support you."

"You're only a couple of spare remnants." Greener-than-Kadaj's eyes slid away from both of them, disinterested. "If Mother has no other purpose for you, wait. Sooner or later you will become a part of me."

Then he left. Even if Loz hadn't crashed his bike, he couldn't have kept up this time. And Sephiroth'd said there was no point anyway.

He went over to right his motorcycle and see if he could fix it up enough to ride again. Which somehow before too long just meant sitting in the dirt fiddling with wires in the starter mechanism while Yazoo came over. He was the quietest of all of them and Loz couldn't actually _hear_ him, but he knew he was there anyway.

Yazoo sat down next to him, and Loz couldn't even get his eyes clear enough to see his brother's expression. "Going to tell me to stop crying?" he sniffled. There didn't seem to be any point in denying it, anymore.

"…no," said Yazoo.

Which just proved that everything was awful.

"I miss Kadaj," Loz said, finally. Their brother hadn't been gone long enough for that to make sense, except he was never coming back which meant it already felt like he'd been gone _forever._ It had been so _easy_ , when Kadaj was around—the work had been huge and overwhelming, but they'd had a _purpose,_ they'd had Mother to find, and they'd had jobs to do and….

"I know," said Yazoo.

After a long time he added quietly, "So do I."

* * *

They weren't there, days later, when the other-brother that Kadaj had liked to call their Black Sheep cut down Sephiroth in the ruins of Midgar, when the skies tore open and rain came down that scoured Mother's gift from within every human it touched. Yazoo and Loz were on the Northern Continent, in the Sleeping Forest. (It was one of the first places they remembered being. It had always been Kadaj's favorite.) They weren't even plotting, because they didn't know enough to plot. Also only one of them was even a little bit good at it. Loz was throwing nuts as hard as he could, and Yazoo was shooting them out of the air. He only knew something had changed when the gun reports ceased and the latest nuts fell to the ground whole.

"Hey, Yazooo, what's—" he complained, looking around, and—it was Sephiroth.

He was standing just where Yazoo had been, but Yazoo's coat and smirk and the long barrels of his guns (they were both really his, even though one was supposed to be Loz's and he usually carried it) were gone. Sephiroth wore silver on his shoulders and he was as tall as Loz, taller than Yazoo.

Sephiroth looked angry. "If that is how you want it," he said—not to Loz, though, he wasn't even looking at Loz. He was staring off through the trees, southeast. His sword appeared in his hand. It was _big._ "No more games, then. I will consume the life of this Planet, and then all will be one with me. And _you_ will know too late to change it."

"Sephiroth…" said Loz.

Kadaj used to say _I don't know Sephiroth._ They all knew that when they reunited with Mother they'd get to meet him, and Loz thought Kadaj was the one who'd cared the most about that, but he never got the chance. Sephiroth started walking—up the path, toward the dead city. "Aniki!" Yazoo wasn't there anymore, and Loz thought he knew what that meant, but he—"Aniki, where's Kadaj? What happened?"

Sephiroth paused. Maybe he remembered what happened last time he ignored Loz and didn't want the trouble, or maybe he liked the question. "I underestimated Cloud," he said. "It won't happen again."

"So Kadaj is—"

"Dead." Sephiroth glanced back at him, over his shoulder, and his hair swung so much like Yazoo's used to but totally different, paler and longer and…it was like it was _heavier_ somehow even though it was sort of floating. "You're the last spare. Try to keep yourself in good condition." Then he started walking again.

Loz stood still for a little while, and then he cast Haste and started to _run,_ off away from the path, ran until his legs ached and then turned and started beating up the trees. His knuckles left streaks of blood on the raw wood by the end, and he maybe should have used his gauntlet but it wasn't like trees were _difficult opponents._

Finally he was so tired he just sat down on a log that used to be part of a tree. His insides hurt a little less now that his outsides hurt too. Still a lot, though.

Loz's hand went to the place on his chest where Mother had touched him. Sephiroth had _lost_ , that was what this meant. Cloud and his friends had beaten him _again_ , and he wanted to be mad at the stupid cheaters but his chest just felt empty, empty, empty. Missing Kadaj had been miserable, but he didn't even know _how_ to miss Yazoo. It was like…if you stopped being able to see and hear on one side, not so much _missing_ him as him always _not being there._

If Sephiroth lost again, he would come and use Loz. If he won, Loz would be swallowed up along with all the other energy on this Planet while they went looking for a different one.

Loz was scared to die, but he didn't _mind_ it. It was just becoming part of Mother again, or part of Sephiroth, or maybe even part of the Planet, and being Loz was uncomfortable and lonely and _sad_ , but—but Sephiroth hadn't cared who Kadaj was, or Yazoo. He might not know their names, even. Once everything was part of him, he still wouldn't care.

Loz had lived all his life for Mother and the Reunion, but he was the last one left who remembered Kadaj and Yazoo. Those memories shouldn't disappear.

* * *

He crept into Edge at night like a fox through a warren of mu. Mother's enemies lived here, and he knew a little bit about them because Kadaj had cared. There was a church in ruined Midgar where he might be able to find one of them alone, but it turned out to be full of really scary water, so he'd backed out in a hurry. Decided to head for the bar, instead—he didn't know how to find it, but getting directions to a bar wasn't so hard, not when you knew the name. Even if it did mean talking to humans.

Someone caught up with him before he was halfway there. He'd probably been following him since the church, if Loz thought about it. He should have been paying attention but that had never been his _job_ before.

"Stop."

Loz stopped, but he also turned around. Flexed his fingers inside the Dual Hound. Just a few days ago, before they'd found Mother, he would have thought the little yellow man looked fun to fight. ( _Sephiroth_ thought so.) Now nothing seemed like much fun. "Aniki," Loz said.

Cloud drew back a little. "I'm not…"

He still felt like part of them. Not the same muted pull from back when Loz had seen him riding his bike from a long way off, on Kadaj's scouting expeditions, but—something. Mother still had some hold on him, even if he wasn't dying anymore. He was still a brother. And he might kill him, sure, but that was the only kind of brother Loz had left. "Sephiroth killed Yazoo," Loz said, and started to cry.

He turned out to have to explain who Yazoo was, but Cloud didn't tell him to stop crying. He just waited, standing patiently while Loz covered his face with his hand and tried to keep talking even though everything hurt so much.

When he was done, brother black-sheep gave a sigh.

"I…held Kadaj while he died," Cloud said.

"You met him?" Loz hadn't expected that. He guessed he'd thought they'd killed Sephiroth and he'd just—disappeared, to take over Yazoo. "You…you _killed_ him. Didn't you."

"I'm not sure," said Cloud. His eyebrows drew together a little, and he reminded Loz of Kadaj for a second. But he didn't break out of the thoughtful moment and wave his arms or talk hugely, he just—looked up at Loz and said in the same low voice, "I killed Sephiroth. And then he melted away and it was this kid who must have been Kadaj. He didn't have any of the wounds I gave Sephiroth, but…he was dying. He dissolved into light," Cloud added. "Starting from his right hand. He was smiling."

Loz was crying again, loud messy sobs like never before and he couldn't stop and Cloud _still_ didn't tell him to.

He squatted down beside Loz in the end, after he'd cried himself into a sort of puddle. "Why did you come here?" he asked.

"Sephiroth killed Yazoo," Loz said, back around to the start.

"And?" Cloud waited a second. "You don't want him to kill you?"

Loz shook his head. Now that he knew Kadaj hadn't _stopped existing_ it was…he didn't care so much about staying alive. But if Sephiroth _won_ now and the whole Planet joined the Reunion then Kadaj would be gone again forever, and Yazoo would never exist again, and… "I don't want my brothers to be all the way gone," he said.

Cloud put a hand on his back. It felt weird, but not bad. "My friend Aerith is in the Lifestream," he said. "She was there to meet Kadaj. She's taking care of him."

It felt wrong to be relying on anybody but Mother, but Mother…only cared about Sephiroth, and it wasn't _fair._ He sniffled. "Will she take care of Yazoo, too?"

"I'm sure. My friend Zack will, too." Cloud nodded, a sharp little thing that wasn't quite like Kadaj but made Loz think of him anyway. "Him too."

"And me?"

Cloud frowned a little. "You're still alive."

"Yeah, but if I stay that way I'll just turn into Sephiroth when…when Yazoo is used up." He gulped and hiccupped and tried not to start crying again. He wished there was an enemy to punch that wasn't…well, his brothers. He wished there was an enemy he could punch that was _here._ He punched the ground, because it was all the Planet's stupid fault somehow, but he barely put any power into it and there wasn't a shockwave or anything.

Cloud's hand on his back patted a few times. "Let's talk about that later," he said. "How about you come to the Seventh Heaven now and we get you…something to eat. And a handkerchief."

Loz had never really eaten anything before, except some candy he got once. He'd tasted a lot of things, like the chestnuts, but most of them were nasty. Kadaj said that was because they _weren't food_ and stop being stupid. Yazoo thought the faces he made were funny and kept finding him new things to try. He sniffled again. "Okay."

* * *

Seventh Heaven belonged to a girl who made food, and she gave Loz some, and it was…really good. Maybe better than candy. "Whoah, slow down," she said halfway through his second bowl. "You'll get sick. You're eating like you never had real food before."

Loz guessed he could slow down. He stopped eating stew to have some bread. "Haven't," he said around the bread.

Her eyebrows went up. She looked at Cloud. Cloud shrugged. "Well that's not good. What have you been eating?"

"Stuff. Nuts a couple of times. A rock, that was a bad idea." Yazoo had laughed for _forever_ , though. "Kadaj gave me candy once."

"Uh…" The girl who made food was making a face that Yazoo probably would have liked almost as much as the ones Loz made. "How old are you?"

Loz thought about it. "How many days are in a week?" he asked.

"Seven," said Cloud.

"Okay, about…ten, fifteen of those, then."

Looked like that was a surprise. "You look older," said the girl after a second.

"Can I have some more?" asked Loz, holding out his bowl.

She gave him some more.

Cloud brought more people while he was eating it, and Loz explained a little better this time about Sephiroth and Kadaj and Yazoo because he didn't cry so hard this time. "Y'mean we need t'stop him again already?" exclaimed the smaller of the two cats. "Crikey!"

"How surprised are we, really?" asked the Seventh Heaven girl.

"Huh. Maybe some of us besides Cloud can actually fight this time," grumbled the dark man without a shirt. One of his hands was metal and Loz thought he might be fun to fight against. If he was actually strong.

"Aerith's water might make a good attack item now," said Cloud. "I want to bring bottles of it."

"And all the good materia!" said the smallest girl. "Cloud, I'll loan you Leviathan again, just this time!"

"We'll need to move fast," said the red man, the one who'd rescued the Turks.

Seventh Heaven girl nodded. "If he's already in the City of the Ancients and planning to take us by surprise, he might have something nasty ready to go. There are a lot of Geostigma cases away from Midgar that he can still use until we cure them, and I guess there isn't time to get the water to everyone before that."

"Does anybody know how he did that damn thing with the clouds?" asked the yellow-haired man that wasn't Cloud. A couple of people looked at Loz, who had no idea what they were talking about let alone how it worked. He spooned up more stew. It really was better than candy.

The larger cat, the red one, was looking at Loz. "Is he coming?" it asked. Its voice reminded him of Yazoo. It hurt.

"Where?" Loz asked, when everybody else looked at him too instead of answering.

"To fight Sephiroth."

Was he. Going to come. Fight Sephiroth.

Loz dropped his spoon. Oh. His hands never shook before. He stood up.

"Loz?" asked the Seventh Heaven girl.

"My—" The table was shaking too, now. "My head feels funny."

When he woke up, the table was broken. _Most_ of the tables were broken.

"Jenova or Sephiroth noticed," said Cloud, who had a cut over his eye that hadn't been there before. "She attacked us."

"You're pretty tough," said the girl who'd fed him, not very angry. "Look at my place now!"

Loz sat down. There wasn't a chair anymore, but he didn't care. He put his head in his hands.

"It's okay," said Cloud. He was coming closer. "It happened to me before. Nobody got hurt. You'll be okay."

"Mother's mad at me," said Loz. And _of course_ she was mad, he was going against her plans, he was _getting in the way_ of her plans, he was _going against his family_. He should have known this already. "Mother's mad at me and I _don't know how to feel_."

He'd loved Mother more than anything as long as he could remember. Except…it looked like Kadaj and Yazoo were more important, after all.

One of the people made a weird throaty sound—yellow man who wasn't Cloud, now holding a spear. "Are we gonna start with the goddamn waterworks again?"

Food girl's fist closed. "Shut up, Cid, he's _three months old_. I bet you cried more at his age."

"I can't come fight Sephiroth," Loz said. His head didn't start shaking again. That was good.

"Now, that's not—" Food Girl began.

Cloud interrupted her. "Don't, Tifa. Or you, Barrett." He folded his arms. "I remember the speeches I got after the Temple of the Ancients. You were right that I couldn't give up, but that didn't mean I should go rushing in trying to fight a person who could get inside my head more than anybody else's."

"Yeah," agreed the smallest girl, who liked materia. "Learn from your mistakes, geez!"

"So what are we gonna do with him?" asked Metal Hand. "Lock 'im up?"

"You have a prison Sephiroth could not escape from?" asked the red man. He didn't sound like he thought Metal Hand actually did. Loz didn't think he did, either. There probably wasn't one.

"What do you think, Loz?" Tifa the food girl asked, bending over. She was _nice_ and it made him want to _cry._

He shrugged instead. He'd _told_ them what he knew, and if the Planet was being nice to Kadaj now then that part was okay, and Sephiroth had told him to keep his body in good condition. In case he needed it. "I guess you should kill me," he said.

Everybody started shouting.

The tiny girl and the spear man thought killing him sounded fine. Tifa and the big cat thought it didn't. The small cat didn't make any sense. Metal Hand was arguing…both sides at once?

"We don't have _time_ to argue about this!" Tifa shouted loudest of all, and stomped a broken table-leg into two pieces with a big crack that made most of everybody shut up. She reminded Loz of Kadaj kind of a lot. "Anyway, it doesn't matter what any of us think. Loz," she said, turning to face him and bending down a little, because he was still sitting on the floor. "That's not right. None of this is your fault. You shouldn't have to die to stop someone else's plans."

Loz guessed it was nice that somebody cared what was fair. "It's how it is," he said. Didn't cry, because Kadaj and Yazoo wouldn't have wanted him to. They wouldn't have wanted him to side with Mother's enemies either, but maybe if they'd been the ones left behind they'd have decided the same thing.

Maybe not. Maybe Loz was just that weak. But they weren't _here_ so he couldn't _ask_ them. So there.

Yellow Spear Man rubbed the back of his head. "Aw, hell. Listen, kid…"

"You think there's anyone in this world that really understands themselves?" asked Metal Hand. "People get depressed because they don't know what's up, but that doesn't mean they lie down and die. You gotta keep gettin' up. Cuz that's life. That's _living._ " Loz looked up at him. It wasn't like he _wanted_ to die because he was _sad_ or _confused_ or _giving up._ Except maybe it was like that. So Metal Hand was arguing both sides because he thought Loz should be dead but didn't like that Loz was going along with it? Humans really didn't make any sense.

" _Barret,_ " said Cloud, so Loz figured that was Metal Hand's name. Then he looked down again at Loz. "There's one thing we can do," Cloud told him. "It's risky. But if you survive, then you probably don't have to worry about Sephiroth. Any more than everybody else does."

Tifa bit her lip. "Cloud, do you really think…"

"We don't have time to research his biology, y'know!" said the little cat in the pointy hat. Loz glared at it.

He looked back at Cloud. Who was the only brother he had left, he guessed. He got up off the floor.

* * *

When they got back to the scary church, the sun was rising. Nobody was there but the two of them. There was a big hole in the roof and a big sword stabbed into the table on the other side of the water. It sort of reminded Loz of that place in the white woods Kadaj liked, with the spiky house. But in a building. Surrounded by broken buildings. And trash.

It was actually sort of like a forest. A burned-down, human forest.

Loz _didn't like the water._

Cloud waded in ahead of him. The water was _scary_ and also shiny, in the rising sun, but Cloud got up to his stomach okay and turned around, looked up. "Come on," he said, very soft. He was shiny, too. Huh. Yazoo would have made fun of it. Kadaj would have liked it though. Kadaj had always been shiniest.

Loz took a breath. Kadaj was in the Lifestream, and he'd been smiling, and the Planet had taken him and not ripped him apart, and Cloud's dead friends were taking care of him, and the _worst thing that could happen_ here was that he wound up with Kadaj. So it was fine. He stepped in. Scary-bright water closed over his legs, and he waded out toward Cloud until it came to his waist.

There was something alive in the water. No. The water was part of something alive.

 _Look at you,_ it said, and it curled under his skin and-and-and—"It's _tasting_ me," Loz said. Maybe sort of squeaked.

"It's okay," said Cloud encouragingly. "You're not melting, that's a good sign."

Yeah. Not melting. It…didn't even exactly hurt. Loz bunched up his shoulders. "It _tickles._ "

 _Want to be mine?_ it asked, and slid a little deeper, into the thick weight of his muscles. There was no space for it and it _hurt_.

"I want to be _mine,_ " Loz said back without thinking about it. It wasn't exactly what he meant, because what he wanted to belong to was his brothers, but he was the only one left, so—so—

Green fire curling under his skin said, _Alien dead wrong thing,_ and he saw a picture that he knew somehow was him, what he _really_ was, what Mother had used to make him—a scrap of muscle from the curve of the shoulder, pale, no blood left in it, chips of bone stuck in the bottom and that was all, that was all that was real, just a little piece of Sephiroth and an even smaller piece of Mother—Loz was—

His face was under the water now and he thought maybe he'd fallen down. He tried to get up and he couldn't. Somewhere, a girl was talking, but he couldn't hear the words. Tifa? Not Tifa. Definitely not Mother. _Monster?_ the water asked. _Here to eat?_

Loz was being eaten, and it wasn't supposed to _hurt,_ he was just supposed to be—melted, and with Kadaj—and Yazoo would come soon too, and they could just be—together—

 _Ahhhh,_ said the water, and it hurt so much.

And then there was an arm around his chest, hauling him up, and he was coughing up water and except for that nothing hurt at all.

Cloud dragged him up onto the floor and propped Loz against his tiny shoulder while he finished getting the water out of his lungs. "I think you're okay now," Cloud said.

"I got eaten," said Loz. Sniffled and coughed at the same time, and then coughed harder for a second. Cloud's hand slapped his back, even smaller than Kadaj's but also even stronger, and Loz coughed himself out. "Yeah," he decided. His breath started to come steady again. The sun had gotten even brighter while he was in the water, but the reflections didn't sting anymore. Through the space where the roof wasn't, the sky was terribly blue. "Yeah. I'm okay."

* * *

They caught up to Sephiroth in the second forest, the one in the middle of the city. The water was black and smoking.

They'd given Loz some new materia and it wouldn't go into his arm like materia used to, so they gave him a bangle to wear it on, too. (The old materia were still in his arm, and he could use them. He couldn't get them out. The cat in the hat was curious what would happen when they were mastered.)

Loz had Tifa on one side of him and the red man on the other, and altogether there were nine of them lined up on the ground. And one Sephiroth hovering overhead.

"Hey, Aniki!" Loz shouted, crouching down, and _jumped._ He couldn't jump like Yazoo could have, or even like Kadaj, let alone how far Yazoo used to be able to get if Loz gave him a boost, but it was enough. Enough to get him high enough to drive his sparking fist into the chest that wasn't Yazoo's and probably couldn't ever be Yazoo's again. "You _suck!_ "

* * *

 ** _A/N:_** _Some brothers you would be better off without; Sephiroth at this point in canon is definitely one of them. The most interesting things about the Remnants, to me, were the ways in which they were and were not children, and the fact that they kind of didn't physically exist. Materia do not go_ inside your arm _.  
_

 _I updated this fic yesterday on AO3, where edits are easier, and got the bizarre feedback of seven hits, four kudos, and no comments, and am feeling supremely demoralized, but if I ever cheer up the next chapter will be about that time Shinra imploded while Sephiroth was still a kid in the Nibelheim facilities, and Cloud was not an only child. See you then?  
_


End file.
